According to Benjamin N. Gedan in today’s Projo, Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Stephen Fortunato has ruled that the state Board of Elections must make copies of “ballots that [did] not register a vote during a recount” that can be examined by individuals not associated with the Board. The BOE objects to Judge Fortunato’s ruling and has delayed the recounts that were in progress while it seeks to have it overturned…
The Board of Elections yesterday asked the state Supreme Court to delay enforcement of a Superior Court decision mandating that hundreds of ballots be segregated and photocopied during machine recounts.The recounts yet to be finalized involve Allan Fung in Cranston, Joseph Larisa in East Providence as well as local races in East Greenwich, Portsmouth and Tiverton.
On Tuesday, Judge Stephen J. Fortunato Jr. ruled that ballots that do not register a vote during a recount be photocopied to potentially allow a manual examination to determine if the voter’s intent can be learned.
The Board of Elections strongly objected, saying the removal of ballots for photocopying would slow recounts, increase mistakes and facilitate a manual review process that would mirror the tortured presidential election recount in 2000.
My question is this: Is the BOE objecting to specific procedures that have been laid out by the Judge, or are they objecting to ever letting anyone from outside of the BOE see the ballots? If the objection is the more general one, then my second question is what good is it to keep a paper-audit trail if you are never going to let anyone from outside see it?
(Also, a minor digression: I wonder if Judge Fortunato had an opportunity to extol the virtues of Marxism to the judges from Russia who paid a visit to the Rhode Island courts earlier this week?) [Open full post]
According to Edward Fitzpatrick in today’s Projo, Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch continues his pattern of asserting that the rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to him. We’ve had the Attorney General assert that it’s alright for him to take campaign contributions from a defendant that he is in negotiations with and to file incomplete campaign finance reports. Now, the AG is claiming his office should be exempt from Rhode Island’s Access to Public Record’s Act…
Facing a deadline in an access-to-public-records request, Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch yesterday released none of the evidence gathered as part of the Station nightclub investigation.[Open full post]
Instead, the attorney general’s office sent The Journal a letter saying it could not release certain information and records because of privacy concerns and because of orders issued previously by Superior Court Judge Francis J. Darigan Jr….
Earlier in the day, a Superior Court judge rejected a petition from the attorney general that sought guidance on what material must be made public. Lawyers met in chambers with Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson, who concluded Lynch’s petition did not follow the procedure laid out in state law regarding access to public records, according to the attorney general’s office and a lawyer representing The Journal….
[Spokesman for the Attorney General Michael Healey] said, “Nothing about this case has been routine and basically what we were trying to convey to Judge Thompson in chambers this morning was: This is an exceptional case, so please consider giving us an exemption.”
Scott Mayerowitz of the Projo provides some specific numbers on the projected state budget deficits, for this year and next…
But state government is also spending more than was budgeted, particularly in the Department of Corrections and the Department of Children, Youth and Families. Additionally, a reduction in the state’s work force hasn’t been fully implemented.Remember, this is what Rhode Island is facing during a national economic boom. What’s going to happen to RI in the event of an economic downturn? [Open full post]
State lawmakers face not only the $104.8-million deficit this year, but an expected $254-million deficit for the fiscal year that begins on July 1.
Commenter “Andy” (no relation, as far as I know) tries to provide a signature example of how emergency room overuse contributes to rising healthcare costs…
If an uninsured person has no primary care provider, they are less likely to seek help if they have (to take a silly example) a chronic stomach ache. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, the stomach ache is the result of an ulcer. If the uninsured goes to a clinic early on, it seems to me that it is a relatively quick and inexpensive fix. If, however, the uninsured does nothing until the ulcer burns a hole in the stomach (or whatever it is that ulcers do – I am not a doctor) and then goes to the ER, then the uninsured will need surgery, which is a significant cost that can be recovered by driving up premiums/costs for the insured population.It is true that Andy’s example describes a situation, if frequent enough, that would drive up insurance rates for everyone. The longer people wait before seeking care, the more intensive care they are likely to need. More intensive care for more people means (assuming a traditional insurance model) that everyone’s insurance premiums go up.
Still, Andy’s example does not support the conjecture that the real cost of providing care at an ER is any greater than the real cost of providing care at a walk-in clinic or other type of facility. It�s the waiting that drives costs up, regardless of where care is finally delivered. However, for the rest of this posting at least, we can let this distinction pass, and focus on the issue that too many people waiting until they feel sick enough to go to a healthcare provider of last resort could be driving up healthcare costs for everyone.
Solving this problem takes us back to the paradox that universal care advocates generally want to avoid. Preventative care would catch some, maybe many, illnesses early, obviating the need for more expensive treatments. Yet there is no way, if we really want everyone to take advantage of preventative care programs, that it is rational to pay for them through an insurance-style system (full argument here). For preventative care, it makes much more sense to eliminate the middleman and pay doctors directly.
So what do we do?
The answer, in part, is to separate healthcare events into two categories, rare events (accidents, major illnesses) paid for through insurance, and routine events (regular check-up, initial examinations of aches and pains) paid for through direct reimbursement of doctors. Then, we give everyone the option of a health-savings-account plan for paying for the routine events. And then, knowing that regular check-ups and establishing a relationship with a general practitioner reduces the odds that someone will need intensive care, we sell health insurance at two different rates. Those who use some of their HSA money each year for a preventive care regimen get a slightly lower rate, because there are less likely to need major care in the future. Those who don’t pay a higher insurance rate for the same coverage.
Note that aspects of the over-regulation of health insurance, things like “community rating” systems, make this kind of common sense approach illegal in many places. It is deeply frustrating when government throws up regulatory barriers that prevent people from acting rationally and then says the only solution is a total-government takeover of the system that government mucked up in the first place. [Open full post]
(via John J. Miller of National Review) [Open full post]Cranston, RI — Mayor Laffey today ordered that Cranston flags be lowered to half-mast to honor the life of Nobel prize-winning economist, Milton Friedman, who passed away today at the age of ninety-four. The Mayor commented, “Milton Friedman’s belief that individual freedom should rule economic policy is inspirational to all of us who truly believe in the American Dream.” Mayor Laffey added that Friedman, “along with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul, and of course, Ronald Reagan were all part of a team that brought us out of the global malaise of 1970’s and collectively — though in very different ways — contributed to the overwhelming victory of Democracy over Communism.”
Charles E.F. Millard wrote a New York Post op-ed about the NY Republican Party that, with a few details changed, could have been written about the RI Republican Party…
New leadership is needed. [Former New York Republican Chairman Bill Powers] summed up the keys to me after last week’s bloodbath: “You have to have a plan,” and “you have to believe”….The leadership of Rhode Island’s GOP certainly seems to flunk both of Mr. Powers’ tests: they’re not organized (contrary to State Chairwoman Pat Morgan’s frighteningly bizarre statement from this week’s Providence Phoenix that “the state party is really stronger and better than it has ever been”) and they don’t believe in anything that they are willing to talk about.
When the people who control the podium fail to make the case for GOP principles for nearly a decade running, don’t be surprised when voters, donors and activists are unpersuaded.
John Holmes, former state Republican chair, has recently suggested that the state Republican party should be focused on than lowering taxes and economic development. But those are platitudes. Anyone can run on those ideas. And anyone has. As Millard points out…
In this last election, [New York Democratic Governor-Elect Eliot Spitzer] espoused lower taxes and the reform of special-interest Albany.As the example of Mr. Spitzer shows, Northeast liberal Republicans need to stop looking to external boogeymen (i.e. Southern conservatives) to explain their failure and accept that their near-extinction in the political arena is the result of their failure to differentiate themselves from Northeastern liberal Democrats. [Open full post]
Senator Reed’s “four-point plan” for resolving the Iraq conflict is reasonable — even if short on practical methodology — but he undermines his entire strategy with his statement of principle:
Now the president needs to take the next step and make it clear to the Iraqis that our military presence is not open-ended and we will begin redeploying our forces from Iraq as quickly as possible. …
If President Bush cannot secure these basic commitments from the Iraqis, then the logic of keeping over 144,000 American troops in Iraq is suspect.
This approach is doomed to failure for two reasons:
- It ensures that the insurgents and terrorists understand that they don’t actually have to defeat the combined military force of the United States and the young representative government of Iraq, but merely to make things sufficiently difficult that the United States will abandon the ally that it has created.
- It creates an environment in which the safest strategy for would-be power players in the new government is to hedge their bets. If the United States is threatening to retreat, then Iraqi government officials have to be prepared for the possibility that one of the factions — one of the “militias” — may soon be calling the shots.
I wouldn’t presume to offer military strategies, but as a matter of basic approach, it seems to me that the message we want to send to Iraq’s insurgents and government alike is that we are not going anywhere and may very well rewrite the rules to suite our own needs. The result of our losing patience has to be a stronger hand, not a weaker backbone.
[Open full post]A piece by Bernard F. Sullivan in Tuesday’s Providence Journal brings to light an interesting paradox. On the one hand, it’s difficult to fathom that a man with such apparent deficiency in categorical comprehension could have ever been a regional editor for a major newspaper. On the other, his expressed concept of government enables insight into the thought processes of some secularists: they don’t necessarily have an especially restrictive view of “separation of church and state”; rather, they simply can’t understand that church and state have distinct functions and different rules of operation. Consider:
There is perhaps no institution more authoritarian and autocratic than the Roman Catholic Church. Yet its leaders were willing to cozy up to pols in a desperate attempt to end gay marriages on a popular vote. Then, when the vote threatened to go against their canonical stance, as in the case of women priests, they scurried back to the mountain of magisterial intransigence and, hoping for a collective short memory on the part of the congregation, said church policies are not determined by popular vote.
So, if “archdiocesan officials” explain that “church policies are not determined by popular vote,” they must behave as if state policies are not determined by popular vote, either, but rather accept the determination of the state’s judicial hierarchy. If they insist on attempting to leverage democracy to shape government policy in accordance with their religious beliefs, then they must subject their religious beliefs to the democratic process. It isn’t possible, in this civic model, for a religious organization to maintain that God’s instructions are not available for popular revision, but that human laws are.
Curiously, Sullivan doesn’t give any indication that he believes that those human laws ought to be determined through a democratic process when once the modern interpreters of old government texts have issued their ruling. Perhaps it isn’t so much authoritarianism that bothers him as disagreement.
Given my suspicions, I won’t bother addressing his crack that “maybe diocesan church leaders might get lathered up about street killings, poverty, violence, homelessness, child hunger and lack of adequate health care.” The notion that people could sincerely believe that fortifying traditional marriage could be central to addressing all of those problems would surely be too much for him to bear, and perhaps to understand.
Before the RI GOP can hope to make political headway, its members must identify what they really stand for, which is something that I wrote about in my last piece. Next, they must turn to the hard work of party building, which means developing and funding candidates. It is here that a fundamental reprioritization needs to be made by both the party and those who would like to seek political office with an “R” next to their names.
It’s been my impression that Rhode Island Republicans are too enamored with running for the big-name positions–Governor, U.S. Congress, Mayor–and not so much into vying for the local political billets like Town Council, School Committee, or State Legislature. In other words, if RI politics were a buffet table, too many GOP candidates pass right over the meat and potatoes and head for the filet mignon. The problem is, there are many more meat-and-potatoes entrées, and they are cheaper and easier to get!
Heck, even the consummate filet mignon politician–Senator Lincoln Chafee–realized that you have to begin your political diet by scarfing down some SOS. He was a Warwick City Councilman before becoming Mayor of Warwick. Then he was appointed and re-elected to the Senate.
I’m not necessarily arguing against running for the big offices right out of the gate. Governor Carcieri was a political unknown, but he had the ability to fund himself. Through hard work and perseverance–and despite the doubts of the RIGOP establishment–he won the Governor’s race twice. For that matter, Mayor Laffey has also been a “self-funder.” Additionally, his tenure as Mayor also made him a recognizable political personality (for good and ill) in his Senate run. (Tangential point: It’s interesting that two of the most successful members of the RIGOP today were/are considered “outsiders” by the RIGOP establishment.) While some may argue that Mayor Laffey should have “settled” for a state-level office, he had enough financial juice and name recognition to make a viable run for a high-profile office.
However, both the Governor and Mayor Laffey are the exceptions and, along with Senator Chafee, are evidence of part of a different, but related, problem within the RI GOP: an over-reliance on well-moneyed individuals to self-fund their own campaigns and bring everyone lower on the ticket along for the ride. The average GOP candidate–the one who’s eating SOS–needs support from the state party to be able to finance a run for Town Council or State Rep. It’s all fine and dandy to argue (hope?) that top-o’-the-ticket coattails can make up for lack of cash, but I haven’t seen that translate into political success for the RI GOP. Cash would work better.
Look, I don’t have a financial background nor any real idea as to the mechanics of political fund-raising. “I’m an idea man.” As such, I have to think that if the RI GOP could offer attractive candidates, the money would come. Nonetheless, I also realize that any organization needs an effective leader. Yesterday, I pointed to the discussion that Dan Yorke was having about the RI GOP in which he proposed that they should impose the death penalty on themselves. End the misery now. Scorch the earth so that something new can grow in a few years. Yorke’s premise is that there is no high-profile leader who is willing or able to step up and make the changes necessary for the RI GOP to become a truly viable political entity. Therefore, get the bad apples (according to Yorke, Bernie Jackvony and John Holmes) out by knocking their legs out from under them.
Perhaps he’s right, and as I said, while I recognize the need for good leadership in any organization, parties and movements also must be built from the bottom up. The rank and file can reform the party, if they put their minds to it. No matter who becomes the leader of the RIGOP, or how they get there, it’s my belief that–to really change the political equation in this state–he or she must recruit effective candidates to run in local elections.
So it seems to me that the path to success lays between having a top down and a bottom up party. Of necessity, the RI GOP still has to be an organizationally top-down party, with smart, effective (and well-connected) leadership. However, the implementation of a sound political agenda–real party building–can only be done starting from the bottom of the ticket and working up.
Some Republicans, such as Warwick Mayor Scott Avedesian, have recognized this and worked their way through lower political offices to upper. Sue Stenhouse, though she lost, is another good example (I keep coming back to Warwick, don’t I?) of a candidate with experience on the Warwick City Council who sought a higher office.
Starting small acquaints a candidate with political and governmental processes. More importantly, it also acquaints them with the voters. Thus, it gives them something that most don’t have the money to buy: name recognition. Like it or not, it isn’t the ideas that first attract RI voters to particular candidates, it’s how well they know and like them. All politics may be local, but in Rhode Island, it’s also personal. More on that next time.
So, according to a new poll:
While voters in Election Day surveys said corruption and scandal in Congress were among the most important factors in their vote, the postelection poll indicated 37 percent of all adults said the war in Iraq should be at the top of the congressional agenda during the next two years. Nevertheless, 57 percent of all adults in the AP-Ipsos poll said Democrats do not have a plan for Iraq; 29 percent said they do.
That finding strikes at the heart of a Democratic dilemma. The party has been of one voice in criticizing President Bush’s strategy for the war but has been more equivocal on how to move in a different direction.
Democrats such as Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania want a fixed deadline to pull all troops out of the country. Other Democrats, including some party leaders, have voiced support for a staggered withdrawal that demands greater responsibility from the Iraqis.
I like that…”equivocal.” Sheesh. Anyway, let me see if I’ve got this straight. For a couple years now the President has been criticized by many Democrats for either not having a plan or having the wrong plan. Now, the average American voter is telling us that Iraq is the most important task facing a Congress led by the Democrat party, but also admits that they don’t think that the new leaders in Congress have a plan.
And how is that tactic of voting out the GOP because of “corruption and scandal” working out? Well, apparently, the new House Majority leader isn’t exactly squeeky clean. Writes the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund:
House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi’s endorsement of Rep. John Murtha for majority leader, the No. 2 position in the Democratic leaderhsip, has roiled her caucus. “She will ensure that they [Mr. Murtha and his allies] win. This is hardball politics,” Rep. Jim Moran, a top Murtha ally, told the Hill, a congressional newspaper. “We are entering an era where when the speaker instructs you what to do, you do it.”
But several members are privately aghast that Mr. Murtha, a pork-barreling opponent of most House ethics reforms, could become the second most visible symbol of the new Democratic rule. “We are supposed to change business as usual, not put the fox in charge of the henhouse,” one Democratic member told me. “It’s not just the Abscam scandal of the 1980s that he barely dodged, he’s a disaster waiting to happen because of his current behavior,” another told me.
By no means is this the only such story. Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post also wrote about Murtha (read ’em both). But it’s not just Murtha…apparently Speaker-Elect Pelosi also thinks having an impeached judge running the House Intelligence committee is a good idea. Marcus wrote about this one, too:
…Nancy Pelosi’s first test as speaker will arrive long before the 110th Congress convenes. Her choice to head the House intelligence committee — unlike other House committees, this one is left entirely up to the party leadership — will speak volumes about whether a Speaker Pelosi will be able to resist a return to paint-by-numbers Democratic Party interest-group politics as usual.
Pelosi is in a box of her own devising. The panel’s ranking Democrat is her fellow Californian Jane Harman — smart and hardworking but also abrasive, ambitious and, in Pelosi’s estimation, insufficiently partisan on the committee. So Pelosi, once the intelligence panel’s ranking Democrat herself, has made clear that she doesn’t intend to name Harman to the chairmanship.
The wrong decision, in my view, but one that’s magnified by the unfortunate fact that next in line is Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings. In 1989, after being acquitted in a criminal trial, Hastings was stripped of his position as a federal judge — impeached by the House in which he now serves and convicted by the Senate — for conspiring to extort a $150,000 bribe in a case before him, repeatedly lying about it under oath and manufacturing evidence at his trial.
How’s that vote for “change” looking now?
UPDATE: (Via Instapundit) Meanwhile, the GOP has apparently learned a lesson and decided that Trent Lott should help lead them into the future. Brilliant. And Allahpundit points to this John Miller piece that explains why the GOP dumped Lott in the first place. Dean Barnett is right: “Is it just me, or is it becoming increasingly apparent that the Republicans and Democrats are determined to engage in a two year dumb-off?”
